recollections, scavenging hungrily in a rotting log for grubs and
wriggling insects, mating with some musk-drenched creature in a dank and
lightless den…
If he allowed any of these thoughts, urges, or memories to preoccupy
him, he would slip away into that mindless subhuman state he had entered
both times when he had killed back at the rest area, and in that
condition he’d drive the pickup straight off the road. Therefore, he
tried to repress those alluring images and urges, strove to focus his
attention on the rainy highway ahead. He was largely successful-though
at times his vision briefly clouded, and he began to breathe too fast,
and the siren call of other states of consciousness became almost too
much to bear.
For long stretches of time, he felt nothing physically unusual happening
to him. But on several occasions he was aware of changes taking place,
and then it was as if his body were a ball of tangled worms that, having
recently lain dormant and still, suddenly began to squirm and writhe
frantically. After having seen his inhuman eyes in the rearview mirror
back at the rest stopone green and orange with a slit-shaped iris, the
other multifaceted and even stranger-he had not dared to look at
himself, for he knew that his sanity was already precarious. However,
he could see his hands upon the steering wheel, and he was aware of
ongoing alterations in them, For a while, his elongated fingers grew
shorter, thicker, and the long hooked nails retracted somewhat, and the
web between thumb and the first finger all but vanished, then the
process reversed itself, and his hands grew larger again, the knuckles
lumpier, the claws even sharper and more wickedly pointed than before.
At the moment, his hands were so hideousdark, mottled, with a
backward-curving spur at the base of each monstrous nail, and with one
extra joint in each finger-that he kept his gaze on the road ahead and
tried not to look down.
His inability to confront his own appearance resulted not merely from
fear of what he was becoming. He was afraid, yes, but he also took a
sick, demented pleasure in his transformation. At least for the moment,
he was immensely strong, lightning-quick, and deadly. Except for his
inhuman appearance, he was the personification of that macho dream of
absolute power and unstoppable fury that every young boy entertained and
that no man ever quite outgrew. He could not allow himself to dwell on
this, for his power fantasies could trigger a descent into the animal
state.
The peculiar and not unpleasant fire in his flesh, blood, and bones was
with him now at all times, without pause, and in fact it grew hotter by
the hour. Previously he had thought of himself as a man melting into
new forms, but now he almost felt as if he were not melting but aflame,
as if fire would leap from his fingertips at any moment.
He had given it a name, the changefire.
Fortunately, the debilitating spasms of intense pain that had seized him
early in his metamorphosis were no longer a part of the changes.
Now and then an ache arose, or a brief stabbing agony, but nothing as
intense as before and nothing that lasted longer than a minute or two.
Apparently, during the past ten hours, amorphousness had becojne a
genetically programmed condition of his body, as natural to him-and
therefore as painless-as respiration, a regular heartbeat, digestion,
and excretion.
Periodic attacks of cripplingly severe hunger were the only pains he
suffered. However, those pangs could be excruciating, unlike any hunger
he had ever known in his previous life. As his body destroyed old cells
and manufactured new ones at a frantic pace, it required a lot of fuel
to fire the process. He also found himself urinating far more
frequently than usual, and each time he pulled off the road to relieve
his bladder, his urine reeked ever more strongly of ammonia and other
chemicals.
Now, as he drove the pickup over a rise in the highway and suddenly
found himself looking down upon the sprawling, scintillant spectacle of
Las Vegas, he was hit once more by a hunger that seized his stomach in a